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Modernizing Your Practical Processes

Nostalgia for 80s and 90s culture is all over the internet, especially social media. However, one place this mindset doesn't belong is in your practical
processes for your small business or startup.

Certain technologies and ways of communicating may see completely natural to your organization. You may favor Microsoft Word for document creation,
PowerPoint for information decks and slides, Microsoft Excel for spreadsheets and analytics presentation, paper memos for important announcements,
rolodexes for customer/client information, phone calls for internal office communication and email or flash drives (hopefully not floppy disks)
for large file distribution. Below we'll help you bring these processes into the 2010s.

- Documents: Most workers these days have used Microsoft Word as a basis of their office applications, usually learning how to type
and compose documents in the software. While this approach may seem logical for one-off information deliveries, you may consider using something
like Google Docs as a way to easily distribute the documents and allow for input and changes whenever necessary, especially when the document needs
to be checked by multiple people.

- Announcements: On a similar note, physical memos distributed for office announcements wastes paper and clutters desks and trashcans.
Email is a more cost-effective alternative for alerting your staff of any upcoming events or policy changes. You can even use a tool like Boomerang
to help schedule your emails if you have multiple announcements to make throughout the week or month.

- Client information: You may have a rolodex or even an email address book to keep up with prospects and leads, but oftentimes, that's
far from enough to help organize all of your data. Using a customer relationship management (CRM) system allows you to create various accounts
and categories for all of the people and clients you meet. You can even track the sales process from initial meeting to closed deal.

- File distribution: Though you can deliver files up to 25 MB in certain email providers, documents and other type of files larger
than 25MB would have to be broken up into multiple emails or transferred via a flash drive or external hard drive. By paying a small monthly or
annual fee depending on your needs, you can create a Dropbox account. You can decide who has access to your files or just send a link with the
ability to download but not edit.

- Presentations, data and analytics: Though PowerPoint and Excel can be crucial business tools, the flexibility that online applications
provide should not be ignored. Google's Slides and Sheets can make delivery of these presentations and analytics incredibly easy. As mentioned
in many of the above sections, collaborative teams and offices benefit from the ability to review and edit in real-time. You can also access PowerPoint
and Excel on the internet via Office365.

- Office communication: Although email seems like big step away from phone calls towards tech-savvy office management, you can go
even further by using messaging systems such as Google Hangouts and Slack, which allow you to monitor who is available on your team to talk at
any given time. You can also send files and images for immediate download.

For more tips like this, be sure to contact us at leijun@campbellbusinessservices.com!